Devil's Acre (19 page)

‘The creature does not need to walk
, brother. It flies through the air on Satan’s breath.’

I looked at him
uncertainly.

‘How else do you explain it?’
He pulled up his hood to hide his face.

‘Lest the dead recognize him,’ nodded
Maynus coming up behind me.

Another monk, braver than the rest, edged closer, his hand outstretched before him like a man testing his weight on a frozen pond. He gave Jane’s body a tentative push. When it didn’t move he pushed harder. ‘She’s frozen solid.’

No-one wanted to venture closer. We all stood staring.

‘Well we can’t just leave her
like that,’ I said furious at my own timidity. I strode purposefully forward and started to brush the snow from Jane’s face, to the horrified gasps of my brother monks I was pleased to hear. But there was nothing to be done. She had been dead for hours frozen so solid I couldn’t even get her eyes to close.

From behind I heard a
groan. I turned to see Samson standing there.

‘Oh Jane. This was never meant to be.’

‘Really father?’ I said angrily. ‘What then was meant?’

He made no reply. As he began to intone the prayer for the dead I went over to Maynus.

‘A pity he couldn’t have done as much for Ralf.’

‘No-one can foretell the future,
mon fils
,’ smiled the prior sadly.

‘Not even Samson of Tottington?’

‘Not even he.’

It took some digging to free Jane from her frozen tomb so firmly was she buried. It was almost as though she was determined not to leave even in death. As the monks got to work on her my eye was caught by a figure standing in the shadows. It was the grave-digger I had spoken to earlier in the week.

‘
So she dead then?’ he chuckled as I approached. ‘Thought she would be sitting out here night after night.’

‘
You don’t believe it was the monster killed her either?’

He snorted. ‘’Tweren’t no monster
I saw. Not less it wore monk’s garb.’

‘I don’t follow you.
Look, have you seen something? If you have you must tell me. Speak now I beg you.’

He gave me a cynical smirk
and glanced about before lowering his voice. ‘Two on ’em. Come at night.’

‘To do what?’

‘Take he away of course.’

I was struggling with the man’s accent. ‘You’re saying the body was removed? By two monks?’

He looked at me as though I were stupid. ‘Tha’s what I say.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two nights gone, mebbe three.’

‘That was before we last spoke. Why didn’t you mention this then?’

‘That were afore she frizzed. Besides,’ he looked me up and down. ‘Could’ve been you. All monks look the same in the dark.’

‘Well it wasn’t me.
’

‘So you say.’ H
e tutted and shook his head. ‘Three nights she sat. An’ all the time the grave were empty as a witch’s tit.’

‘Did you tell her that?
’

He didn’t need to answer.
Of course he told her. It explained why Jane was digging the grave. And probably why he was telling me now - out of some mischief.

‘
These two monks,’ I said. ‘Can you describe them?’

‘Like I told ’ee, it were dark.’

‘But you must have noticed something. Were they tall? Short?’

‘One were tall.’

‘As tall as Brother Lambert?’

He shrugged. ‘Mebbe’

‘But it was a body they removed - you’re sure of that?’

He tapped the palm of his hand with a gnarled finger. ‘It were long. It were heavy. An’ it were wrapped in a shroud. What else were it?’

I nodded. ‘All right. Do you know where they took it?’

He stuck out his chin again. ‘Up through yon vineyard.’

I looked to see where he was indicating but all I could see were rows of skeletal vines stretching up the north side of the valley. When I turned back he had gone.

Chapter
22

TOMELINUS - YET AGAIN

On
the face of it the grave-digger’s story was absurd. Why would anybody want to bury a corpse one night only to dig it up again the next? The man clearly had no great love for the monks and I didn’t doubt that part of his motive for telling me was to stir up trouble for them. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. It was too elaborate to have been invention.

I needed to speak to someone about all this and I should have liked to begin with Brother Lambert. But as I made my way back towards the priory to do just that I saw another monk making a beeline for me across the cloister garth
. What now? Like the man at the graveside his hood was up covering his face - fearful of being recognized by the monster? Ralf may not recognize him with his hood up but I did, or thought I did. Something about the way he walked - or rather, skipped.

‘Tomelinus?’

He pulled his hood back just enough to reveal his grinning features. ‘How did thee know it were me brotherliness, pip-pip-tirrip?’

‘Divine inspiration.’ I took him to one side. ‘Tom, why are you still here? I thought we agreed, as soon as you were fit enough you would leave
Acre. It’s not safe for you here, especially after yesterday. Anyone abroad is fair game for every knife-wielding monster-slayer in the town, even dressed as a monk -
especially
dressed as a monk.’ I looked at him. ‘Why are you dressed as a monk, by the way?’

‘
My clothes were rags.’

‘So I saw,’ I said remembering the spectre rising up from the grave.

‘Do ye like it?’ He did a twirl. ‘Wifrey gave it me. He’s taken quite a shine to me. He doesn’t mind my ticks. Says he has a cousin similarly afflicted - what does thee think on that, pip-pip?’

‘I think it’s admirable, but robes are for monks not their servants.’

‘That’s just it, brother. I’ve decided to convert.’

‘Convert?’

‘Aye. I’m going to retake my vows, pip-pip-tirrip-pip.’

‘Oh, my dear fellow
, that’s marvellous!’ I said throwing my arms around him. But then I held him away: ‘This isn’t another trick, is it?’

‘No trick brother. Wifrey is helping me with my vows - or he will once priory is free of its present strife.’

‘Yes, well you’re as much to blame for that as anyone.’ I lowered my voice. ‘You know, don’t you, that you caused great distress by your antics yesterday?’

He looked disappointed. ‘You knew it were me?’

‘Of course I knew it was you. Fortunately nobody else seems to have done - yet. They all thought you were the monster. You scattered them in terror. And do you wonder, staggering about like that?’

‘That weren’t my fault. I were groggy.
That whack on the head.’ He touched the bandage on his brow.

‘
You need a brain for that not a head stuffed with straw. Let me see.’ I delicately lifted the bandage. There was an encrustation of blood sealing the wound and the angry red puffiness had turned a healthy pink. ‘You’re lucky they didn’t try to take your head off. Next time they might. You do know what’s been occurring here don’t you?’

‘I know that yon baggage has succumbed to her nature.’

‘Jane you mean. Yes well, she’s past suffering now. Perhaps she can at last join her Ralf in a better place. We can only pray it is so.’

‘Or join him in his new career, pip-pip?’ he grinned.

‘You don’t believe that any more than I do.’

‘I’ve seen stranger things.’

‘Oh yes, I was forgetting: the Dogmen of the Black Forest.’

‘Closer than that, brotherliness. I mean here in yon spindly covert, pip-pip-pip.’ He nodded in the direction of the vineyard, the same direction that the grave-digger had indicated Ralf’s body had been taken.

I felt a frisson of excitement. ‘Why, what have you seen?’

‘A mystery, brotherliness.’ He started walking backwards and twirling his hands like the sails
of a windmill. ‘Follow me and prepare to be amazed!’

We left the precinct via a small wicket gate and climbed the slope above the priory, Tomelinus leading the way. He skirted up past the vineyard and on through the orchard, barren of fruit at this time of the year and looking like a tangle of witches’ fingers. At the top of the slope we paused to catch breath.

‘Well?’

With another elaborate gesture he indicated a small stone building at the edge of the priory grounds next to the road. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it. I’d noticed it before on my way to and from the castle without knowing what it was.

‘It’s the old chapel,’ he said. ‘And for the present
old Tom’s home, pip-pip.’

‘I was wondering where you’d been sleeping.’

At least here he was off the street and in some kind of shelter - a daily challenge for any vagrant I should imagine, especially at this time of the year. But nowhere can be totally safe, and as if to prove it a sudden crack of a twig sent Tomelinus instantly dropping to the ground and pulling me down with him.

‘What is it?’
I asked.

‘Ssh!’ He put a finger on my lip
s. ‘Wait here.’

Before I could stop him he disappeared. Someone - or some
thing
- was out there. Some vigilante Revenant-hunter perhaps? Or the fiend itself, perhaps? I shuddered at the thought. Suddenly I felt very cold and alone. Maybe I wasn’t as immune to the tales as I thought I was. I listened but all I could hear was the thump of my own heart in my chest.

I waited. Another snap. Then something came a crashing through the bushes like a boar. I yelped
and jumped backwards just as something landed a foot away from me.

‘Holy
Mother of God! Tomelinus, what in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?’

‘Goat
,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, it’s gone. They can be dangerous creatures, goats. Give you a nasty bump up the backside.’ He grinned toothily at me. ‘Did you think I were the monster, brotherliness - pip-pip-tirrip?’

‘No of course
not! I was fearful for your safety, that’s all. Damn smelly things goats.’ I shivered. ‘Come on, show me this home of yours before I freeze to death.’

The old chapel was a simple, oblong-shaped room sitting on the corner of the priory grounds and the road to South Acre. I have no idea what its original purpose was. If I had to guess I’d say it was somewhere for the monks to pray while the church was being constructed. Or perhaps it was a hermitage. Whatever its original function it was now being used as a storeroom mostly for the tools needed to tend in the orchard and vineyard. There were pruning knives, wicker baskets, water butts, bales of straw, lengths of cord as well as a pile of discarded monks’ habits which, I couldn’t help noticing, were not dissimilar to the one Tomelinus was wearing.

He had wisely avoided using the main door from the road so that from the outside the place appeared undisturbed. We got in through a hole in the south east corner. It looked as though the goat had got in the same way and made a bit of a mess. Peat moss was strewn all over the floor
which Tomelinus hastily swept up like a proud housewife. Otherwise he had made the place reasonably comfortable with a bed of sacking and some of the monks’ habits as blankets.

‘Quite a little home from home
.’

‘At least it’s dry
,’ he said still scooping up moss.

‘Once you’re fully adopted by the Cluniacs you won’t need places like this. You’ll sleep in the dormitory with the other monks.’

‘That blessed day cannot come soon enough, brother, pip-pip-pip.’

‘So,’ I said looking around, ‘what is it I have come to see? Something amazing you said.’

He did that thing that conjurers do with their hands to make eggs disappear before your eyes. He blew on his fingers: ‘Something...
puff
...and nothing.’

I frowned. ‘Look Tom, I’m weary.
No tricks now. Remember your promise.’

‘That’s just it, brother, a trick is what it is - but not one of mine this time. A disappearing act
worthy of a conjurer in Michaelmas fair.’

I frowned shaking my head. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

He clasped his hands behind his back to indicate he was being serious. ‘Two nights since two men came here carrying a parcel.’

I felt my stomach lurch
but kept my voice steady. ‘This is a storeroom. I imagine people bring parcels here all the time.’

‘At
midnight?’

‘
All right. What sort of parcel?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t know.
Couldn’t see.’

‘Well
, who were the men?’

‘Don’t know that either.’

‘Tomelinus, you’re not being very coherent.’

‘
I don’t know, brotherliness, because I were a mouse.’ He crouched small to demonstrate. ‘When thee lives as I do thee learns invisibility. Thee hides in corners, under bushes, up trees - and thee does not move, not even to scratch thee-sen, ’til danger is passed. It were also black as pitch - and they had no lights. But I heard two voices, and two sets of feet. Whatever it were they brought it were big and it were heavy for two of them. They fought wi’ it. They struggled to get it in through yon goat hole. They huffed and they puffed. They fiddled and they faddled. They ripped and cut and swore. It sounded like they were moving the great stones at Stonehenge. Then after a few minutes all went quiet and they left.’

I waited.
‘For heaven’s sake, Tomelinus, what did they bring?’

He put up his hand for patience.
‘I waited a good long while to make sure they’d really gone, then I crept out to have a look, pip-pip.’

I was almost beside myself
by now. ‘
And
?’

He shrugged. ‘
Nowt.’

I felt utterly deflated.
‘What, nothing at all?’

‘
Whatever it were it left no trace.’

‘But
it can’t just disappear - if it was as big as you say.’

‘Look around, brotherliness. I have not touched a thing.’

I looked but there was nothing that I could see either. Where would you hide a body?

He giggled. ‘Told thee it wor a mystery.’

‘Trunk!’ I said. ‘Maybe they put him...it...in a trunk. Is there one?’

He made a low sweeping gesture. ‘Be my guest.’

I walked around the chapel - it didn’t take me long - looking for a cupboard, a chest, anywhere that might conceal a body. But there was nowhere.

I clicked my fingers.
‘Cellar?’

He shook his head. ‘Ground’s solid
as a rock. There isn’t one or I’d be in it.’

‘A hidden door, maybe?’

‘In a chapel?’

I looked up at the rafters ‘And you say there’s nothing here? Nothing new?’

‘Nowt but the smell of that old goat - and this.’

He went over to an old bale of straw. Neatly folded on top was a linen cloth. I recognized it immediately. It was the shroud that Ralf’s body
had been wrapped in, the one embroidered so elaborately and beautifully by Sister Angelina at Saint George’s and in which we had transported Ralf across two counties from Thetford to Tottington to Acre on Clytemnestra’s long-suffering back.

But of the body it contained there was no sign.

Everything Tomelinus told me seemed to tie in with what the grave-digger had said:
two men - monks according to the grave-digger, although Tomelinus couldn’t confirm it - exhumed Ralf’s corpse from the cemetery, carried it up through the vineyard and deposited it in the old chapel. But there the trail ended. The monks could have taken him away again, but why would they go to all that trouble just to unwrap him? Even accepting the unlikely possibility that Ralf was indeed able to get up and walk of his own accord surely Tom would have heard him leave. And why bring him there in the first place? Try as I might I could see no logical explanation. Maybe that monk at the graveside was right after all and Ralf did indeed “fly on Satan’s breath”. I was beginning to wonder.